Say it again, with feeling: Senators John Tester (D-MT) and Mike Enzi (R-WY) flexed some legislative and moral muscle earlier this week with an amendment to the agriculture spending bill that halves funding for the USDA’s controversial National Animal Identification System (NAIS). The amended bill ...

Sharfstein socks one to Big Meat: In a hearing held today in the House Rules Committee, Deputy FDA Commissioner Josh Sharfstein threw the administration’s weight behind a ban on feeding antibiotics meant for humans to healthy animals. The practice is common on industrial livestock operations, where...

Before hipsters discovered butchery class: Houston Press reporter Robb Walsh has a long but fascinating feature on his recent adventures in butchery, which “all started with a meat mystery — call it the case of the disappearing skirt.” Walsh was developing fajita recipes for a grilling cookbook...

Cowpooling director: Very nice piece by friend o’Ethicurean Tamar Adler on meeting a Le Grand, CA, butcher who processes mostly beef and lamb for the people who raised them or their customers. Thankfully, Bill McCann has begun to preserve his dying skills on digital video for the Inertent age. (Civil...

School’s out for the summer, but there’s a food fight going on in the cafeteria. In Washington, Congress is turning up the heat on the policies that determine what 30 million children will eat once the lunch bell rings. Want hormones out of kid’s milk? Pesticides off the tomatoes? Local lettuce in the salad...

Will they really listen? The Rural Blog reminds us that the USDA is holding “listening sessions” about the National Animal Identification System (NAIS). The last two will be in Storrs, Connecticut on May 27 and Loveland, Colorado on June 1 (location information and a link to the NAIS comment...

They’re not confining everything, apparently: MSM’s all over the swine flu (SJ Merc) and U.S. hog prices are tanking (Reuters), but few are talking about its possible origins – flies and manure from the CAFO facilities of a Mexican subsidiary of Smithfield Foods. What would we do without...

Fighting the Averyian Flu: Researchers at Johns Hopkins University look a little deeper at the NYT pork op-ed and find that the study mentioned was funded by the National Pork Board, which represents conventional producers, and that the Trichinosis “positive” pigs tested seropositive, meaning...

Snap!-per: Tom Philpott chides Mark Bittman, aka The Minimalist and author of “Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating,” for recommending red snapper—one of the most endangered species in U.S. waters. “I believe that influental food writers, especially ones concerned with conscious...

San Francisco may have more vegetarians and health-obsessed eaters per capita than any other U.S. city, but it also has a fair number of pork lovers — and to serve them, numerous restaurants cure their own meat, offer whole hog dinners, and so on. The city is also a haven for independent and repertory...

Editor’s note: New York part-time farmer Bob Comis sent us a link to a post on his Stonybrook Farm blog for consideration in the Digest, but we liked it so much we asked him if we could publish an edited version in its entirety. His opinions are going to raise some hackles, not to mention hocks, but...

A recent Coolhunting.com video highlights Marlow & Daughters, an old-world style butcher in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. In it, bartender-turned-butcher Tom Mylan explains why the shop works only with whole animals, how he learned to cut meat, and Marlow & Daughters’ laudable...